Political Notes

Published:Proletary, No. 21, February 26(13), 1908.

      Published according to the text inProletary.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1972,

      Moscow,Volume 13,

      pages440-446.Translated:Bernard IsaacsTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thechauvinists are hard at work. Rumours are increasingly
being spread that the Japanese are arming, that they have concentrated 600
battalions in Manchuria for an attack on Russia. Turkey is reported to be
vigorously arming with the intention of declaring war on Russia in the
spring of this year. It is said that a revolt is being prepared in the
Caucasus with the object of seceding from Russia (all that is lacking is a
clamour about the plans of the Poles!). Feeling against Finland is being
worked up by tales that she is arming. A bitter campaign is being conducted
against Austria over the building of a railway in Bosnia. The attacks of
the Russian press on Germany, which is alleged to be inciting Turkey
against Russia, are becoming more violent. The campaign is being conducted
not only in the Russian but also in the French press, whose bribery by the
Russian Government was recently so opportunely mentioned in the Duma by a
Social-Democrat.

Theserious bourgeois press of the West declines to regard this campaign as a
figment of the imagination of newspaper men or the speculation of
sensation-mongers. Obviously, “ruling circles”—meaning the
Black-Hundred tsarist government, or a secret court cabal like the notorious
“Star Chamber”—have given a very definite cue; some systematic
“line” is being pursued, some “new course” has been
adopted. The foreign press traces a direct connection between this chauvinistic
campaign and the fact that the doors of the Duma Committee of State Defence
have been closed to all members of the Duma not belonging to that Committee,
i.e., not only to the revolutionary parties but also to the Cadets; it is even
said that the Russian Government, as acrowning token of its contempt for “constitutionalism”, intends
to apply for credits for frontier military reinforcements not to the whole
Duma, but only to the Black Hundred-Octobrist Committee.

Hereare some quotations from European newspapers, newspapers which are
anything but socialist and which can not be suspected of optimism with
regard to the Russian revolution:

“TheGerman victories over France (in 1870), as Bismarck once
   remarked, fired the ambition of the Russian military, and they too reached
   out for martial laurels. For political, religious, and historical reasons,
   Turkey seemed a most suitable object for this purpose (the war with Turkey
   of 1877-78). Evidently, the same views are held today by certain Russian
   circles who have forgotten the lessons of the Japanese war and who do not
   understand the true needs of the country. As there are no more ‘brothers’
   to be liberated in the Balkans, they have to devise other methods of
   influencing Russian public opinion. And these methods, to tell the truth,
   are even more clumsy than the others: it is being made out that Russia is
   surrounded by internal and external enemies.“Russia’sruling circles seek to bolster up their position
   by the old methods of forcibly suppressing the internal movement for
   emancipation and diverting public attention from the deplorable internal
   situation by arousing nationalist sentiments and stirring up diplomatic
   conflicts, of which nobody knows what the outcome will be.”

“TheGerman victories over France (in 1870), as Bismarck once
   remarked, fired the ambition of the Russian military, and they too reached
   out for martial laurels. For political, religious, and historical reasons,
   Turkey seemed a most suitable object for this purpose (the war with Turkey
   of 1877-78). Evidently, the same views are held today by certain Russian
   circles who have forgotten the lessons of the Japanese war and who do not
   understand the true needs of the country. As there are no more ‘brothers’
   to be liberated in the Balkans, they have to devise other methods of
   influencing Russian public opinion. And these methods, to tell the truth,
   are even more clumsy than the others: it is being made out that Russia is
   surrounded by internal and external enemies.

“Russia’sruling circles seek to bolster up their position
   by the old methods of forcibly suppressing the internal movement for
   emancipation and diverting public attention from the deplorable internal
   situation by arousing nationalist sentiments and stirring up diplomatic
   conflicts, of which nobody knows what the outcome will be.”

Whatis the significance of this new chauvinistic line in the policy of the
counter-revolutionary autocracy? After Tsushima and Mukden, only people from
under whose feet the ground is definitely slipping can embark on such a pol
icy. Notwithstanding all the efforts that have been made, the experience of two
years of reactionhas not createdany reliable support within the
country for the Black-Hundred autocracy, nor any new class elements capable of
rejuvenating the autocracyeconomically. Andwithout thisno
atrocities, no frenzy of the counter-revolution can save the present political
system in Russia.

Stolypin,the Black-Hundred landlords, and the Octobrists all understand that
unless they create new class sup ports for themselves they cannot remain in
power. Hence their policy of utterly ruining the peasants and forcibly breaking
up the village communes in order to clear the wayfor capitalism in agriculture atall costs. The Russian liberals,
the most learned, the most educated, and the most “humane” of
them—like the professors ofRusskiye Vedomosti—prove
to be incomparably more stupid in this respect than the
Stolypins. “It would not be surprising,” says the editorial in
the February 1st issue of this newspaper, “if in deciding, for
instance, the fate of the November provisional regulations, the formerly
Slavophile advocates of the village commune support the attempt of the
Ministry to destroy the village communes by assigning land to individual
householders as their private property.... It may even be assumed that the
defensive aims common to the conservative majority in the Duma and to the
Ministry will suggest to both measures even more aggressive than the famous
ukases of 1906.... We get an amazing picture: the conservative government,
with the support of representatives of the conservative parties, are
preparing to carry out a radical reform of agrarian relations—which
are the least amenable to drastic changes—and are deciding upon so
radical a measure from abstract considerations about the preferability of
one form of ownership to another.”

Wakeup, mister professor! Shake off the archive dust of old-fashioned
Narodism; look at what two years of revolution have done. Stolypin defeated you
not only by physical force, but also because he correctly understood the most
practical need of economic development, namely, the forcible break-up of the
old form of landownership. The great “advance” which has already
been irrevocably effected by the revolution consists in the fact that formerly
the Black-Hundred autocracycouldbase itself on medieval forms of
landownership, whereas now it iscompelled, wholly and irrevocably
compelled, to work for their destruction with feverish speed. For it has
understood thatwithout the break-upof the old agrarian orderthere can be no escapefrom the contradiction which most profoundly of
all explains the Russian revolution, namely, the most backward system of
landownership and the most ignorant peasantry on the one hand, and the most
advanced industrial and finance capitalism on the other!

Soyou are for the Stolypin agrarian legislation? the Narodniks will
ask us in horror.

Oh,no. Calm yourselves! We are unreservedly opposed toallthe forms
of the old landownership in Russia—both landlordism and peasant
allotment ownership. We are unreservedly in favour of a forcible break-up of
this rotten and decaying antiquity which is poisoning everything new. We are in
favour of bourgeoisnationalisationof the land, as the only consistent
slogan of the bourgeois revolution, and as the only practical measure that will
direct the spearhead of the historically necessary break-up against the
landlords by contributing towards the emergence of free farmers from among the
mass of the peasantry.

Afeature of the Russian bourgeois revolution is that a revolutionary
policy on the key issue of the revolution—the agrarian
question—is being pursued by the Black Hundreds and by the peasants
together with the workers. The liberal lawyers and professors, on the other
hand, are advocating something that is absolutely lifeless, absurd, and
utopian—namely, a reconciliation of the two antithetical and mutually
exclusive methods ofbreaking upwhat is obsolescent; a
reconciliation, moreover, which will mean no break up at all. Either a
victory for the peasant revolt and the complete break-up of the old
landowning system in favour of a peasantry that has been remoulded by the
revolution—in other words, confiscation of the landed estates and a
republic; or a Stolypin break-up which also remoulds—in fact,
remoulds and adapts the old landowning system to capitalist
relationships—but wholly in the interests of the land lords and at
the price of the utter ruin of the peasant masses, their forcible ejection
from the countryside, the eviction, starvation, and the extermination of
the flower of the peas ant youth with the help of jails, exile, shooting,
and torture. For a minority to enforce such a policy against the majority
would not be easy, but economically it is not impossible. We must help the
people to realise this. But the attempt by means of a neat reform,
peacefully and without violence, to escape from that utterly tangled skein
of medieval contradictions, which has been created by centuries of Russian
history, is the stupidest dream of hidebound “men in
mufflers”. Economic necessity will certainly call for, and will
certainly bring about a most “drastic change” in Russia’s
agrarian system. The historical question is whetherit will be carried out by the landlords, led by the tsar and Stolypin, or
by the peasant masses, led by the proletariat.

“Unionof the opposition”—such is the topic of
the day in the Russian political press. Stolypin’s police-mindedRossiyais jubilant: “Union?—that means the Cadets too
are revolutionaries! At the Cadets, at ’em!” The CadetRech,
thoroughly imbued with the desire of the loyal government official to prove
that the Constitutional-Democrats can be no less moderate than the
Octobrists, primly purses its lips, pours forth a flood of
“moral” indignation at the unscrupulous attempts to accuse it
of being revolutionary, and declares: We, of course, would welcome the
union of the opposition, but that union must be a movement “from
Left to Right” (editorial of February 2). “We have had
experience of political mistakes and disillusionments. When an opposition
unites, it naturally unites on the minimum programme of the most moderate
of the parties which form it.”

Thisprogramme is perfectly clear: the hegemony of bourgeois
liberalism—those are my terms, say the Cadets, just as Falloux in
1871 said to Thiers, when the latter appealed to him for support: The
monarchy—those are my terms.

StolichnayaPochtarealised that it is shameful, disgraceful
to say such things outright, and it therefore “does not agree”
withRechand confines itself to vague hints at the
“pre-October mood” (the accursed censorship prevents a clearly
stated political programme!) and, in substance, calls for a
deal.Rech, it as much as says, wants to lead, and the
revolutionaries want to lead (the new union), but what about me—am I
not entitled to a commission for acting as an honest broker?

“Union”—wewarmly sympathise with that slogan, especially
when there is a hint—although only a hint!—of
“pre-October moods”. Only, history does not repeat itself, my
dear political intriguers! And no power on earth can erase from the minds
of the various classes the lessons that were taught by the “history
of the three years”. Those lessons are exceedingly rich both in
positive content (the forms, nature, and conditions of the victory of themassstruggle of the workers and peasants in 1905) and in negative
content(the failure of the two Dumas, in other words, the shattering of
constitutional illusions and of Cadet hegemony).

Anyonewho wants systematically to study, ponder over, understand, and
teach the massestheselessons is welcome to do so—we are
wholly in favour of “union”, union for a relentless struggle
against the renegades of the revolution. You don’t like that? Well,
then our paths diverge.

Theold “pro-October” slogan (“constituent
assembly”) is a good one and (we hope that this will not rouse the
ire of M-d-m of theOur Thoughtsymposium[1]) we shall not discard it. But it is inadequate. It is too
formal. It contains no recognition of the acute practical issues that life
is raising. We shall reinforce it with the great lesson of the three great
years. Our “minimum programme”, “our programme of
union”, is simple and clear:

(1) confiscation of all landlords’ estates;

(2) a republic. Thekindof constituent assembly we need is one
that can achieve this.

Thehistory of the two Dumas, the Cadet Dumas, showed with striking
clarity that the real struggle of social forces— the struggle which
was not always a conscious one, which did not always break into the open,
but which always exercised a decisive influence upon every big political
issue and which always swept away like dust tile conjuring tricks of the
naïve and knavishly astute “constitutionalist”
ignoramuses—was waged wholly and completely for the sake of the two
above-mentioned “objects”. Not abstract theories, but the real
experience of the struggle of our popular masses under the real conditions
of Russia’s landlord autocracy, has demonstrated to us in practice
the inevitability of precisely these slogans. To those who are capable of
grasping them we propose that we “march separately” but
“strike together”, strike at the enemy who is devastating
Russia and killing off thousands of her finest people.

“Withsuch a programme of union you will remain isolated.”
That is not true.

Readthe speeches of the non-party peasants in the, first two Dumas,
and you will see that our programme of union only formulates their wishes,
their needs, and the elementarily necessary conclusions to be drawn from
these needs. Against those who do not understand these needs—from the
Cadets to Peshekhonov (he too has preached “union” inMoscow, as we are informed from there)—we shall wage war in the name
of “union”.

Itwill be a stubborn war. We knew how to work during the long years
preceding the revolution. Not for nothing do they say we are as hard as
rock. The Social-Democrats have built a proletarian party which will not be
disheartened by the failure of the first armed onslaught, will not lose its
head, nor be carried away by adventures. That party is marching to
socialism, without tying itself or its future to the outcome of any
particular period of bourgeois revolutions. That is precisely why it is
also free of the weaker aspects of bourgeois revolution. And this
proletarian party is marching to victory.

[1]Leninis possibly referring to the article “Political
Sketches” published in the symposiumNasha Tribuna(Our
Tribune), Book I, Vilna, 1907. The writer of the article—M-d-m
(Medem), a prominent Bundist, argued that after the defeat of the
revolution of 1905-07 Russian Social-Democracy should drop such
revolutionary slogans as that calling for a constituent assembly.